


Warning Signs

by Jareth_Rex



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 07:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13026621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jareth_Rex/pseuds/Jareth_Rex
Summary: Not every person had a match. Some unlucky few had a warning.





	Warning Signs

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing here but the parts from my own head. I meant no harm, only wanted to share the (not so) pretty thoughts.

Even before he had been taken to the doctors in their long coats with their cold tables and searing lights, Julian had wondered about his future. His parents had helixes twisting over the skin of their palms. At fifteen, he realized it damned them for the sin they committed together.

Cupped within Julian's palm, a flaring cobra coiled.

Common wisdom knew that not every person had a _match_. Some had a mirror. Others a complement. An unlucky few had a warning. By the day he had packed his one bag and run for the Academy, he had believed his meant he would destroy any potential partner. Theirs would be a poisoned heart or some such melodramatic thing.

He resolved to hope they heeded their warning and found a match instead.

It was easy to jump from one bed to the next. He was handsome; Richard and Amsha had seen to that. Stronger, faster. Smarter, and if he couldn't ‘make them stay’, all the better. Women were easier than men. Not to attract. Though more numerous, men thought far less. Women were smarter, and that made them harder to fool for more than a week or month. But so much more enjoyable.

Then again, he had easily recognized a bat’leth slicing across Jadzia’s palm, so maybe it was just that _most_ women were smarter.

Major Kira baffled him with her palm full of stars. The engineer, O'Brien, had a strange, jagged symbol on his. It was months before O'Brien liked him well enough to say it was from an old Earth culture. It marked him a warrior. It was a year before he made the connection to Keiko’s flurry of petals.

Sisko didn’t talk about his crawling flames.

Julian had laughed at Quark’s shower of gold, and he had felt impish telling Rom that the arching lines of his mark resembled a Bajoran’s nose. Slow, kind Rom had frozen in terror of the dabo girls, but Julian watched them, too, when he wasn’t courting for a brief affair. They liked Rom and they knew how to be kind.

Not even palm to palm with Garak as he began to die, did Julian think the winged creature soaring over his snake meant anything.

Even on the runabout, seeking the dragon to save the monster in his Infirmary, he hadn’t thought it through. By turns, Garak amused and infuriated him. But the fascination only deepened with each damnable lie. He hadn’t known anyone with as quick and insatiable an intellect. Garak was the consummate actor, and the performance drew Julian to the theatre every time.

Every actor had to weave himself into the part, didn’t they?

As Garak lied to the dragon, soothing its final moments, Julian had remembered the snakes and wings of an old, old symbol. He watched Garak crawl into a hole to take them to the stars. Hell was a place in the Cardassian’s heart; a vat of poison to drown in.

Sometimes, it wasn’t a _match_ seared into the skin.

Worf’s palm of water droplets became tears before anyone understood. And Julian fought a losing battle to be Ezri’s mobius. Malleable as imagination and immutable as creation, Odo had no mark to define his love. Perhaps it was his sacrifice that inspired, to go where he was needed. Where he belonged.

In the palm of Julian’s hand, the viper waited.

A world burned around them, but he reached into the pit to pull Garak out. Or pull himself in. He didn’t care. More than Garak needed him in the ruins, but none needed him more. Ziyal with her stylized sun was gone. Amid the rubble of a civilization, Julian forgot about frontiers and glory.

Even without warmth, there was still hope.

The red blood staining his hands suited Julian as well as Garak, but black suited the simple tailor best. The shape of mourning and regret moved through the streets. Frightened people turned to him, followed him, listened to him as he rebuilt for the living and dug graves for the dead. They grew used to the alien at his side that brought them medicine and food sailing across skies. If his smooth hands made them shudder, he always seemed too lost in thought to notice. If he saw unnumbered dead, at least he was no Klingon to toast.

If the man they followed loved him, they could do no worse.

In the den of vipers, Julian brought home their orphans. Example set, others followed. No family had remained whole, but jagged pieces could grow together. A needle could stitch scattered scraps or torn flesh together. If it would never be the same, there was still a future to have. Their shadow became their light, his alien became their friend.

And in their clasped hands, the people found a future.


End file.
